How Life Imitates Chess

Garry Kasparov (2007)

Chess is an old and complex game, so much so that Kasparov
claims that styles of play, over the centuries, have mirrored the thinking of
each age. But can chess itself act as a mirror for daily life? Just because
something works on the chessboard, does that mean it will work in business or
our personal relationships? Yes and no. It’s a bit of a stretch to equate the
two, but in this book Kasparov does come up with a few interesting points along
the way.

The concept of the book is so promising: surely the world
chess champion must be both highly intelligent and an excellent strategist,
therefore what better person to write something akin to a modern day ‘art of
war’.

Yet the main weakness of the book is that by realising that
there is not one decision-making style that will work for everyone, it too
often just gives somewhat bland highly generalised advise.

Overall the lessons of the book could be summarised as:

Become conscious of your own decision-making style, avoid
your comfort zone (don’t get complacent) and always be looking to improve
yourself.

Chapter
Summaries

Chapter 1:
The Lesson

Kasparov describes how the challenge of taking part in the
1984 World Chess championships against Anatoly Karpov made him examine his own
decision making processes. (This is called ‘meta-cognition: thinking about
thinking).

“Self-awareness is essential to being able to combine your
knowledge, experience and talent to reach your peak performance. Few people
ever take the opportunity to perform this sort of analysis.” (P.11).

Chapter 2:
Life Imitates Chess

“The technique of recording chess games with symbols (‘chess
notation’) gives chess a detailed history, enabling millions of chess players
through the ages to enjoy and learn from the games of the legendary players of
the past.” (P.17)

Kasparov later goes on to call chess a kind of ‘cognitive
laboratory’. The interesting, and almost unique, aspect of chess means we are
able to use it as a kind of historical record of decision-making. We don’t just
see who won matches in the past, but we can examine the exact move-by-move
process that the players went through.

Given that computers are far superior at calculating that
humans are, why are humans as good at chess as they are? (it took a while for a
computer to beat humans at chess). Kasparov puts this down to the ability of
the human brain to think creatively and to synthesise it with logical thinking.

“There is little evidence that chess masters possess talents
beyond the obvious one of playing chess.” (P.17)

Chapter 3:
Strategy

Its important to have a strategy, otherwise you are just
reacting at what others throw at you. The exact optimal strategy depends on
your own strengths, which you must find out for yourself. For some people, an
attacking strategy works best, for others a defensive one.

In a competitive situation like a game of chess, its not a
good idea to get thrown off-guard by a surprising challenge from your opponent
that forces you into reacting to their way of playing, not yours. However, if
you are forced on to your opponent’s terrain, be conscious of it and be
adaptable.

“A
frequently changed strategy is the same as no strategy.” (p.33)

Constantly asking ‘why?’ is something that separates the
strategist from the mere tactician.

A goal need to be analysed and broken down into its
underlying reasons (why you want it), otherwise its just a vague wish.

Chapter 4:
Strategy and Tactics

Strategy is what you should be working on even when there is
apparently nothing to do, and apparently no threats or challenges facing you. Tactics
are the day-to-day ways that you advance the strategy.

“If strategy represents the ends, tactics are the means.”
(p.45)

Chapter 5:
Calculation

Chess isn’t always about raw calculation. The best players
aren’t necessarily looking further ahead than mediocre players. Kasparov
himself only tends to look about five moves ahead.

“Chess software excels in the area of calculation, precisely
the area that Humans find most difficult.” (p.58)

Chapter 6:
Talent

Many areas require a combination of talents, so its not
always immediately obvious that a person might have a talent in that area. It’s
important to push yourself to explore where you might be talented.

The two most important talents to have in chess are memory
and fantasy (imagination).

Looking at things in new ways, and recognising and then
breaking your routines are key to solving problems. Often we have misleading ideas about what we
are good or bad at. Its better to be a little over-confident about your
abilities than to create a negative, self-fulfilling believe about them and
thus doom yourself to under-perform.

Chapter 7:
Preparation

Some people never find their talents, some find them but
don’t manage to use them fully, whilst others don’t have much talent but
succeed due to very hard work and practice. The highest performers have some
natural talent but then work very hard to hone it. Yet the ability to work very
hard, and consistently push yourself can also be thought of as a talent.

Everyone has talents that they haven’t fully developed.

Kasparov’s own hard work in preparing for competitions
seemed to correlate with him doing well, even though, strangely, most of the
tactics he planned he ended up not using! Many people throughout history who
are thought of as geniuses had this approach to endless preparation, tinkering
and hard work.

The ability to work hard for long hours and remain effective
varies from person to person.

“It is critical to know what motivates you, to find out how
to push yourself that extra mile.” (p.82)

Chapter 8:
Material, time, quality

“This isn’t a cookbook; we all need to create our own
successful combinations with the ingredients we have. There are guidelines for
what works, but each person has to discover what works for him through practice
and observation. This cannot happen rapidly, if at all, of its own accord. We
must take an active role in our education.” (p.87)

“Improving our decision-making process is like studying our
native language. It requires conscious thought about something we do
unconsciously in order to improve something we’ve been doing all our lives.” (p.87)

Chapter 9:
Exchanges and Imbalances

Advantages or surpluses in one area can often be exchanged
for something you are lacking in another area.

“There are imbalances in our daily lives and we constantly
struggle to transform them positively.” (p.117)

Chapter
10: Innovation

Some creative ideas make the news (i.e. they result in quick
applications/ inventions), whilst others make history (their impact is larger,
but it cascades into multiple new ideas and ways of thinking over time).

The value of innovations can often be judged by asking what
are their implications. Some innovations are just fads, others have wider
implications.

“Just about every great discovery was the product of prior
knowledge, hard work, and systematic thinking.” (p.121)

Thorough knowledge of what has come before is the foundation
of new thinking.

“The only way to survive is to keep moving up the pyramid. You
can’t stay at the bottom, the competition there is too fierce.” (p. 128)

At the dawn of computer chess, some predicted that
eventually computers would become so good at chess that people would loose
interest, and that they would eventually ‘prove’ a “mathematically conclusive
way to win from the start” but neither of these predictions have happened.

Some ideas can be too far ahead of their time, or be
deficient in just one area so that they don’t get adopted en masse. You need to
be aware of trends, as these show a series of ideas moving together, and are
pointers at what is currently being adopted.

Chapter
11: Phases of the game

In order to make it more accessible to newbies, chess is
often broken down into three phases: the opening, middlegame, and endgame. The
opening sets up the possibilities of the game, and is a creative phase. The
middlegame is a time for assertiveness and initiative and favours action, the
endgame is the result of cool calculation rather than imagination, and thus
favours the prudent, logical and detail-oriented. Does this have a parallel
with life?

Its
better to study whole games of chess – or real life case studies – rather than
just the opening (or theory) because this shows you more about the messy nature
of how the real world operates.

Chapter
12: The Decision-Making Process

Our personal decision-making style may work better in some
areas of our lives than others.

When beginning decision-making its important to start out by
exploring at least two options. There are risks in only exploring one option in
depth.

We need to reign-in our own biases towards being too
impulsive in picking an option, or too conservative in taking too long, or
insisting on exploring every possible option.

There are – in chess and life – often many possible options
to choose from, each of which will lead to many more possible options. We must
learn to limit these choices down to a smaller array of ‘candidate moves’.

Our intuition (recognising patterns based on past
experience) is vital to most of our daily decisions where we don’t have enough
time to logically, step-by-step analyse all the options.

“If there is no benefit to making the decision at the
moment, and no penalty in delaying it, use the time to improve your evaluation,
to gather more information and examine other options.” (p.162)

Chapter
13: The Attacker’s Advantage

“Aggression… means dynamism, innovation, improvement,
courage, risk, and a willingness to take action. We have to learn the value of
unbalancing the situation and taking the initiative.” (p.168)

Aggressive initiative-taking puts an opponent into a
defensive, and hence more constrained and predictable, mode of operation,
giving the attacker the natural advantage.

The threat of attack can be more powerful than the attack
itself.

“As the pace of the world accelerates, the advantage is
moving steadily towards the attacking side.” (p. 172)

Chapter
14: Question Success

Success breeds complacency, and can be the enemy of future
success. When Kasparov achieved his ‘life goal’ of winning the world chess
championship at only 22, he was taken aback by something said to him by the
wife of a former champion: “I feel sorry for you. The greatest day of your life
is over!”

He calls this the ‘gravity of past success’.

The cure for this is to ‘question the status quo at all
times’. We have to search and find flaws before they lead to weakness.

“Winning creates the illusion that everything is fine.”
(P.180)

Chapter
15: The Inner Game

Psychology and mindset are important in chess.

Highly successful chess players almost seem to hypnotise
their opponents with their intimidating stare. This was the case with Pal
Benko, who was so psych’ed out when playing Mikhail Tal that he wore eye shades
while playing!

If a problem dominates our thinking too much, and stops us
focusing on other things, it can be worth trying to resolve it as quickly as
possible. Even if the resolution isn’t completely favourable, it’s like
dropping a stock before it falls in value further.

Having a sense of control is enormously valuable,
psychologically.

Pushing ourselves, psychologically, is also important to
building our mental strength.

“Creative and competitive energy is a tangible thing, and if
we can feel it, so can our opponents. Our confidence level is reflected not how
we move and talk, not just by what we say, but how we say it.”

“There are few things as psychologically brutal as serious
chess. It involves spending five or six hours in total concentration in direct
competition with another mind, with a ticking clock and nowhere to hide. There
are no teammates to share the load, no referees to blame no unlucky dice or
cards to turn over.” (P.189)

Chapter
16: Man, Woman, Machine

Its important to expose ourselves to people who will offer a
contradictory viewpoint, even though the natural tendency is to surround
ourselves with people who think the same way as us.

There is something about the single-minded combat nature of
chess that seems to either make more men than women more suited or more
attracted to it, even though there have been some top class female players.

He talks about something called ‘advanced chess’, which is a
combination of a human player + a computer chess program with a large database.
What he found is that important to making this work is for the human player to
have a really good understanding of how to use the computer program and have a
good process for doing so. He says that a weak player using a strong process to
use a computer program will trump a stronger computer program on its own, and
definitely trump a strong human player using a computer program with a weak
process. Understanding the tool is more important than just possessing it.

Practising and developing the creative part of our brain can
be useful in problem solving. Even though problem solving seems like a logical
activity.

“Grandmasters play chess by combining experience with
intuition backed up with calculation and study. Computers play chess by brute
calculation with study simulated by access to a gigantic database of opening
moves.” (p. 216)

“Engaging the weakest points in our game is…the best and
fastest way to improve.” (P. 219)

Chapter
17: The Big Picture

‘To do’ lists can be useful, but people rarely put big,
strategic decisions or ‘big picture’ tasks on them. Like a camera we need to be
able to zoom in and out, depending on whether we need to focus on the big
picture or the details.

Chapter
18: Intuition

Learning does not just magically happen with experience, we
must take an active role to make it happen.

All intuition, even vague hunches, is based on some level of
practical experience.

Before the age of computer chess–analysis (around pre-1995)
post game analysis was often full of a greater number of mistakes than actual
games. Even though there is more time to analyse after the game, and there is
the benefit of hindsight, the pressure of the game itself seems to better
activate a player’s intuition.

Most people don’t trust their intuition enough.

“Despite the best efforts of psychologists and neurologists,
human thought is still best described by metaphor, poetry and the other devices
we use to express what we do not fully understand.” (P. 237)

Chapter
19: Crisis Point

Recognising that there is a problem is often more daunting
than solving a problem. We often feel the development of a crisis
instinctively, even if we fail to rationally face up to it.

Often we have to decide between choices in which none are
perfect, and how we weigh up the risks and drawbacks is more a matter of our
own personality.